Reeven Justice RC-1204 Review

Reeven Justice RC-1204 Introduction:

It has been five years since OCC has reviewed a product from Reeven. The Reeven RCCT-0901SP was reviewed here on OCC in February of 2009, and a lot has changed since then. And I admit I had not heard of Reeven until the Justice RC-1204 and the Hans RC-1205 showed up at my door. Reeven has a line of CPU coolers, fans, and a nice fan controller. There is even an Extreme Cooling Cup for "Professional Extreme Overclockers" and a warning that "This is not for everybody". Well, that is ok because being mere mortals, we are only focusing on the Justice RC-1204 CPU cooler.

From the Reeven website: "REEVEN is a newly established international manufacturer of PC related products. REEVEN's product lines includes the best quality of advanced CPU coolers, Cooling Fans, Power Supply Units, PC Cases and many other items. the target of our products will be a wide range of audience under our philosopohy 'Professional Quality Gears', for products that will withstand the highest demand." So, I have the Justice RC-1204 and the Hans RC-1205 ready to be reviewed. The Justice RC-1204 is somewhat larger and will be the one I'm reviewing today.

Reeven Justice RC-1204 Closer Look:

The packaging for the Reeven Justice RC-1204 has a lot going on for such a small box. All sides of the box are full of information and graphics. The top of the box shows a nice view of the top of the cooler, showcasing the Reeven logo on the top logo plate, and lists the socket compatibility. The front of the box shows the cooler fan up front and has some useful dimensional information.

The bottom and back side of the package have technical information and specifications in six languages.

The sides show the universal socket clips, socket compatibility, and a very detailed feature description: "Reeven Original Unique Fan Clips design for easy fan mounting." This, I've got to see...

Opening the box, right away you are greeted by a bright yellow fan and a maze of shiny copper tubes. No fancy packaging or foam padding, but everything seems to be in good order. The base rests against the hardware box. Out of the box we have the cooler and fan, the instruction manual, and all the hardware separated in Ziploc bags.

The hardware consists of mounting components for AMD and Intel installations. The yellow fan clips look interesting - a definite departure from the standard metal wire clips. The thermal paste is in a clear plastic pouch rather than a syringe-style dispensing tube.

The instruction sheet is well illustrated with a full parts list, and is laid out with easy-to-follow assembly and installation steps.

Reeven Justice RC-1204 Closer Look:

The RC-1204 is a large tower cooler that comes with one 120mm PWM fan installed. There are 53 aluminum fins capped off with a decorative top plate that has the REEVEN logo stamped neatly in the center. The top plate also covers the termination points of the heat pipes. Some manufacturers leave the termination stubs visible, but Reeven keeps them covered up, and that makes for an aesthetically pleasing cooler. There are two holes that travel down through the fin stack that allow access to the mounting screws that secure the cooler to the base. From any angle, the RC-1204 is a nice looking unit. The fan clips to the fin stack and is easily removable.

The six heat pipes bulge out a little past the sides of the fin stack. Don't forget to peel off the plastic cover so you can apply your thermal paste.

The nickel-plated copper base is machined flat and ready for a nice application of thermal paste.

For me, this is the one of the nicest features of the RC-1204. These yellow plastic clips attach at the four corners of the fan. They pop into the mounting holes on the fan frame, and then clip to the edge of the fin stack. Very fast, secure, and convenient. I really don't like fooling with the metal fan clips that are so common. You think they are locked in and sometimes they aren't, and you don't want a loose piece of metal falling on you mother board or the backside of your graphics card! The RC-1204 comes with an extra set of four clips if you want to add a second fan.

After removing the fan you can see how symmetrical the fin stack is. There are 53 fins and the copper heat pipes are spaced to maximize the exposure to the air flow.

Along the bottom block are the six 6mm copper heat pipes. They are evenly spaced and fill the block. Then they twist and turn upward to meet the fin stack where they ultimately transfer the heat they pick up from your CPU to the fin stack. The mounting strap is loose, so it can be a little tricky to hold steady while the two screws are being installed. The top of the base is machined to accept four tabs on the strap.

The Coldwing 12 PWM fan is rated at .42 amps and can move up to 82.13 CFM of air. The rated speed is 500 to 1500 RPMs with a noise level of 4.3~29.8dBA.

The rear mounting plate is robust and looks right at home on the back of the motherboard. The four studs have anti-rotate features so they won't spin later on during the installation. Looking at the top of the motherboard, there are the four plastic spacers, then the base mounting plate. This plate is secured with four nuts that are easily tightened with the supplied wrench. Pay attention to the orientation of the two threaded holes that hold the cooler to the base. This will affect which way the cooler (and fan) faces.

Regarding RAM clearance, the fan does overhang the first two RAM slots on my MSI Z87-GD65. Tall RAM modules will likely cause you some problems. You could relocate the fan to the other side of the fin stack and open the space for the first two slots. Otherwise, the Justice RC-1204 is a nice addition to show off in your case.

Reeven Justice RC-1204 Testing:

Testing of the Reeven Justice RC-1204 will be accomplished by installing the cooler into the test system case, rather than a test bench. Most systems are built and mounted into a (relatively) sealed chassis, so this method will be used to generate the idle and load results to give a real world view as to the cooling performance one can expect, based on the test system listed below. Of course, your results may vary by several degrees due to case design, case fan placement, and ambient air temperature. The CPU load is generated by Prime 95 version 27.9 for a period of two hours, with a cooldown period of one hour after the computer has returned to an idle state. Real Temp 3.70 is used to log the temperatures with the highest and lowest averages across the four cores of the Core i7 4770K test CPU. Ambient temperatures are kept at 24 °C during the testing to minimize the effect of temperature variations. Each cooler is tested with the manufacturer-supplied thermal compound as delivered.

At idle, the Reeven Justice RC-1204 has no problems keeping the 4770K CPU at 26 °C stock with the included fan, which is of course no surprise. With the CPU loaded, the temp pops up to 73 °C, which is a little warm, but certainly not dangerous.

As for overclocking, we are at 32 °C at idle, which is just fine, and close to 10 degrees warmer than stock at 82 °C under load, which is excellent. I was expecting it to be a little warmer, but the heat is held to 82 °C. Just for giggles, I added a second fan from the Reeven RC-1205 that I am also reviewing and I was only able to knock the OC load temperature down by a couple degrees. I was hoping for a little more than that, but the temp with one fan is just fine, so I won't complain. So the Reeven Justice RC-1204 can keep you cool whether your system is a daily driver or geared up for a mild overclock.

Reeven Justice RC-1204 Conclusion:

My experience with Reeven certainly leaves me with a positive feeling. I was not familiar with Reeven products, but the Justice RC-1204 gets the job done and looks great while doing it. So what do I like about it? To start, I like the size. It is not so massive that it smothers you motherboard. Nevertheless, it is large enough to handle the heat of a mild overclock, which is nice. Next is the way the fan attaches to the fin stack - I like the four plastic clips. Sometimes the usual metal clips can be a pain, but this new refreshing style of plastic clip gets my attention.

Installation of the Justice RC-1204 is fairly easy. The mounting strap that holds the cooler to the base is loose; meaning it is not attached to the base, like you find with many of the Noctua coolers. If you can lay your case / motherboard flat, then you won't really have any problems mounting the cooler to the base, but I do my cooler installs in my test system with the case upright, and gravity is not my friend. If your RAM is not topped off with tall heat spreaders, you will likely be able to populate all the DIMM slots. RAM with tall heat spreaders may prove to be a problem, so you will want to verify your RAM compatibility ahead of time.

So let's talk about performance. The RC-1204 can handle the thermal load of normal daily use - stock performance is just fine. Overclock and crank up the load, and the Reeven Justice RC-1204 steps up to the plate and knocks the heat out of your CPU. Reeven gives you great build quality to go along with the attractive styling. Pricing is yet to be released.

If you're thinking about an air cooling solution that looks good and can quietly handle the heat, then the Reeven Justice RC-1204 will handle the load.